The Occupy Gandhi Three Update by Donnachadh McCarthy

The Occupy Gandhi Three Update by Donnachadh McCarthy
(Update on my Gandhi arrest!)

At 11.30am on Monday – three things were happening for me simultaneuously.

RUNNYMEDE TALK
I was giving the talk that I was invited to give about The Prostitute State at the Runnymede Eco-Village Festival of Democracy which was surrounded by police, illegally treating it as a “rave”.

MAGNA CARTA TRAVESTY
Meanwhile on the meadows below us, as I was speaking, I could hear the Runnymede Baron’s successors staging their bizarre “celebrations” of the Magna Carta.
King John’s successor Elizabeth Saxe Coburg was listening to the 21st century’s media baron Rupert Murdoch’s Prime Minister David Cameron grotesquely imply that abolishing the Human Rights Act was in the spirit of the Magna Carta!

THE OCCUPY GANDHI THREE SECOND COURT HEARING
But the third event taking place that morning was my second court hearing as part of the Occupy Gandhi Three.

The three of us (Mark Maloney, Petra Rakokzi and myself) were arrested in pretty brutal fashion on the 4th of May, whilst chanting peacefully at the feet of the new Mahatma Gandhi statue, in Parliament Square.

It was part of the peaceful Occupy Gandhi Meditation Protest, which was calling for the criminalisation of fossil fuel exploration.

That first hearing was adjourned as the police had failed to provide the prosecution service with any paperwork on the case.

They likewise failed to provide the paperwork at Monday’s second court hearing.

But as the prosecution (but not the defence) had an electronic version, the court agreed to adjourn for a THIRD preliminary hearing on June 29th.

We do not have to attend, as it is for the court to hear prosecution and defence legal issues and to set a date for The Gandhi Three Trial proper.

MAXIMUM SENTENCE
Whilst the fixed penalty notice for putting children’s lives at risk by speeding is £100, the maximum sentence we are outrageously facing for chanting in a tent at Gandhi’s feet in Parliament Square is £6,000 PLUS a month in prison.

Added to this would be unknown court costs – which considering that the trial is already scheduled to hold FOUR hearings into the tent meditation case, are likely to be far higher than they should be.

WHY URGENT NEED FOR CRIMINALISATION OF FOSSIL FUEL EXPLORATION
The Occupy Gandhi Meditation protest was calling for the criminalisation of fossil fuel exploration now, as a tiny minimum first step to saving humanity and the planet’s precious ecosystems!

There are 2,800 gigatonnes of CO2 in already discovered fossil fuel reserves.

We can only emit 475 gigatonnes of this over next 35 years if we are to have any chance of avoiding truly disastrous climate crisis. We are online to bust this carbon budget by 2028.

Yet, our governments and fossil fuel criminals have planned over a TRILLION dollars of investments in finding MORE fossil fuels to destroy humanity with.

The UN claims over 300,000 people are already dying across the planet due to the climate emergency.

This is far far more insanely criminal than anything Hitler, Mao or Stalin did, as these deaths are predicted to be dwarfed by the deaths resulting from temperatures predicted to soar over 2C if we break the remaining carbon budget, expected to be exhausted within 13 years at current rates of burning fossil fuels.

ALARM LEVEL TEN!!
Globally, we are reacting to this emergency at Emergency Level 1. I felt I myself was only reacting a Emergency Level 5 when we really need to be reacting personally and collectively at a full global catastrophic Emergency Level 10.

And this is why I chose to peacefully do this act of civil disobedience at Gandhi’s feet.

I feel I needed to peacefully demonstrate the emergency level we need to be reacting at, in the face of a right wing billionaire owned press who are opposed to adequate action on the climate emergency and a government in hock to them and to the oil and gas corporate lobbyists.

NEW SHAMELESS ECOCIDAL OIL & GAS AUTHORITY
Outrageously, the new government instead of announcing the Renewable Energy and Efficiency Authority, announced the setting up of a UK Oil & Gas Authority to MAXIMISE UK oil and gas production.

How can Britian have any credibility at the Paris Climate Summit (the last chance saloon for humanity) if we are by law maximising the amount of fossil fuels we can add to the already held genocidal stocks of fossil fuels held?!

The planet’s Alarm Bells are ringing at 10 – maybe this morning you could ask yourself, how should you personally be reacting to the fact that the planet is on fire?!

YOU AND DOUSING THE CLIMATE FIRE?
We need literally billions of people taking peaceful non-violent direct action across the planet to put it out!!

Will you be one of us, if you are not already?

Even just switching your bank account away from the disgraced fossil-fuel banks, funding coal destuction eg Barclays or HSBC, would be a positive action!

Or will you just quietly heat your hands and add fuel to the consumerist fire engulfing us all?

Humanity and the very existence of our remaining eco-systems is at stake.